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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22940974">Was The Poison In Our Blood There All Along?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBlood1872/pseuds/BlackBlood1872'>BlackBlood1872</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>King Falls AM (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A little comfort, Depression, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Menstruation, Panic Attacks, Trans Male Character, Trans Sammy Stevens, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, its angst hour my dudes, it’s not my fault sammy's such a good hurt/no comfort character, major projecting up in this joint, self-harm ideation, very little and only at the end</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:20:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,424</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22940974</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBlood1872/pseuds/BlackBlood1872</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Weeks after Sammy survives a close encounter with the Void, he wakes up bleeding for the first time in almost twenty years. He doesn’t expect it, and that might be what hits him the hardest. </p><p>Well, that or the pain of his internal organs flaying themselves into fleshy, bloody pieces. It’s a toss up, really.</p><hr/><p>Sammy has a bad day. It doesn’t really get better, but at least he has Ben to help him through it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Arnold &amp; Sammy Stevens</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Was The Poison In Our Blood There All Along?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Uh, content warning for dark thoughts and dysphoria and self-harm ideation. No actual self-harm, but Sammy does spiral down a pretty bloody rabbit hole a few times. I'm honestly not sure what to warn for or how to tag this? It's very much a vent fic that I just... kept adding to every time Hell Week rolled around.</p><p>This is kind of a sequel to my other trans!Sammy fic (<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22513033">You Bleed Just To Know You're Alive</a>) but you don't need to read that one to understand this one. They are in the same timeline though.</p><p>Title from Goo Goo Dolls' <a href="https://youtu.be/tlePuNP-yl4">Amigone</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sammy wakes slowly and easily, feeling rested and clear. He can barely feel his body in this state, awake enough to be aware yet close enough to sleep to be numb. He could close his eyes and sleep again without any issue, or he could get up and exist like a normal person, energized by a perfect night.</p><p>He shifts, the start of a motion to roll over and fall asleep on his front, and the awareness of his body come roaring back like the first strike of a tsunami. His stomach clenches as pain arcs through his organs; all his bones ache and his muscles feel like water; his skin crawls in waves, revulsion making his throat burn with nausea. The shorts he wore to bed are tacky and slick, and moving his legs rubs the soaked cloth against his skin like sandpaper.</p><p>Sammy can barely breathe, close to hyperventilating as he tries to fight through the sheer pain to just <em>think</em>. What the hell happened to him? What the hell is this?</p><p>Sammy forces his way out of bed, sitting on the edge, and casts his gaze down before he can stop himself.</p><p>His thighs, visible where his boxers have ridden up, are caked with blood, fresh trails cutting thick and slow through the dried mess already there. The sheets where he was laying are a lost cause, a stain larger than he'd ever seen soaked straight through. Sammy doesn’t even want to think about the state of the mattress underneath.</p><p>“Fuck,” Sammy gasps, horror and denial and pure self-loathing robbing him of his voice so the word is nothing more than an exhale.</p><p>“Fuck!” he says again, and his voice cracks, pitches high, and he’s never wanted to tear out his own throat more than he does the second he hears that sound. He wants to dig his nails into his skin, gorge out every bit of himself that’s <em>wrong</em>, everything that <em>hurts</em>, until all he has left is a bloody heap of despair and regret.</p><p>He clenches his hands into fists and curls into himself, eyes filling with tears faster than he can fight. Another pulse from his stomach sends a newer trail down his leg and the tears slip free, falling fat and hot to land on the blood and run pink.</p><p>There’s a creak from the floorboards in front of his door, and Ben knocks softly. “Sammy?” he calls, tentative and worried and suddenly it’s all too much. Sammy’s breath hitches and catches, stuck in his throat as he chokes on the tears. They coat his cheeks, as sticky as his thighs, and he desperately yearns for a shower, hot enough to blister his skin and scrub <em>all of this away</em>.</p><p>Ben knocks again, and his voice has tipped over into alarmed when he calls out again. Sammy can’t think, can’t figure out how to explain this or tell Ben to leave, can't do anything but sob in his ruined bed, ruined clothes, ruined life. He wraps his arms around himself and crumples.</p><p>The door is locked but Ben has a key; he promised not to use it, said it was only for emergencies, but Sammy guesses this is enough of one to justify its use, even if he wants nothing more than to hide, undisturbed, until everything goes away. But he can’t do that, has no say in anything related to his body, apparently, not even the things he thought he'd left behind for good.</p><p>But of course he hasn’t. What did he think was going to happen when he let his hormone prescription run out, no sense in paying for something he'll never use once he’s in the Void and nothing matters.</p><p>Ben opens the door hard enough to bounce it against the wall, and Sammy curls further, head near his knees and breathing through his mouth, as if that could <em>help</em>. The taste of copper sits heavy on his tongue and he feels the visceral urge to take the steel wool from the kitchen and <em>scrub</em> until it’s gone.</p><p>“Sammy, oh god,” he hears Ben whisper, and he squeezes his eyes tighter, vision red and dancing silver behind his lids. Ben’s says something else but there’s rushing in his ears and Ben’s words are nothing more than a buzz, meaningless noise. Something touches his shoulder, light and hesitant, and Sammy flinches hard. His fingers tense into claws and his nails dig into his skin, ten tiny points of pain, and his head clears enough to make out a few words. <em>Clean</em> and <em>let me help</em> and all he can manage to do in response is nod.</p>
<hr/><p>Somehow, someway, Ben coaxes him out of his room and into the bathroom, making him sit on the toilet as he rummages through the cabinets. Sammy’s face is hot with mortification, still hot from his breakdown, stiff with dried tears. He can’t look at Ben, can’t look at his boxers, kicked to the other side of the small room and smudging the floor red wherever they touched. Sammy casts his gaze to the shower, and wonders how much hot water they can afford to waste today.</p><p>“Here, Emily left some of her stuff here, you can use it until we fix this,” Ben says, and he holds out the clean boxers he grabbed at some point and a still wrapped pad.</p><p>Sammy doesn’t want to use this crap again, would rather rip open his stomach and tear out his ovaries than wear a pad—but he can’t. He doesn’t have the pain tolerance nor the medical knowledge needed for that. He wishes, wistfully, for the thousandth time, that he did.</p><p>“Can I—” Sammy croaks. Clears his throat. “Shower. I don’t want…”</p><p>“Oh! Right! Yeah man go for it, I’ll just—leave these here, give you some privacy—shout if you need me, okay? I’m serious. If there’s anything I can do to help, please tell me. I’m here for you.”</p><p>Tears well in his eyes again, and Sammy presses the heels of his palms to them, tries to fight the emotion back. But it’s useless, like it always was when this shit happened to him. He’s sitting on a knife's edge and anything can and will set him off into an emotional outburst. God, he hates this.</p><p>“Can you, um. Painkillers would be good,” Sammy forces out. Talking aggravates the heat in the back of his throat and he can’t keep his voice steady—it wobbles and strains and he can feel the sob crawling it’s way out of the depths of him. He doesn’t want to cry anymore. He can’t stop.</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, I can do that. You clean up, I’ll have something for you when you get out.”</p><p>“Thanks,” Sammy croaks. Ben places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, a grounding touch that causes Sammy to suck in a wavering breath—and then he’s gone, slipping out of the bathroom and closing the door gently behind him.</p><p>Sammy stays where he is for a long time, fingers clenching and unclenching in his hair, catching in tangles and pulling. The sting of pain from his scalp is a welcome distraction, though it can’t cover the sound of gore landing in water as he continues to bleed out.</p><p>It’s a terrible effort to stand, to pull his shirt off and toss it onto his sodden underwear. He’ll have to wash them both; the bottom edge of his shirt is stained like his shorts. Maybe he'll just throw them both out. They’ll stain, no mater how vigorously he cleans them, and he doesn’t want to be reminded of this.</p><p>His muscles wobble with every attempt to use them, and his legs are made of jello that barely holds him up. He stumbles stepping over the lip of the tub and for a brief moment, he wonders if this will be what finally does him in—he’ll slip in the tub and bash his head against the wall, lay stunned and bleeding in the slowly rising water, until either the head wound drains him or the water drowns him. He wonders when Ben will think to check on him, if he'll find him dead under blood streaked water, naked and broken. Wonders how quickly Ben would break if that happened.</p><p>Sammy doesn’t fall. He stands in the shower on trembling legs, blood dripping onto the tiles, one hand braced on the wall, and he doesn’t fall. He’s still alive.</p><p>Sammy doesn’t know if he wants to be.</p><p>He turns the dial as far to the left as it’ll go and shakes under the initial spray of ice water until it warms to burning. It hurts, but he welcomes the pain and lets it wash over him, numb him. The heat soothes the pain in his muscles, which is a very welcome bonus.</p><p>He rubs his palms over his thighs, scrubbing away the blood there and watching it swirl in the water and down the drain, thin strings of dye and thicker strands of tissue. He wants to throw up, but refrains. Ben’s shower doesn’t deserve that.</p><p>Sammy starts scrubbing halfway down his thighs and works upwards, stomach churning as he goes. He doesn’t—he doesn’t want to touch the <em>wound</em>, but the thought of leaving it bloody, of possibly leaving anything behind in the short hairs there causes his skin to crawl and he <em>can’t</em>. He needs it <em>gone</em>. He wants it off his skin, wants to scrub and scrape and gorge it away more than he wants to never interact with that part of his anatomy. It's for the greater good, he tells himself, steeling himself.</p><p>Back home, when he was a teenager, he had a toothbrush he'd worn down and then repurposed. He kept it hidden where his mother could never find it, and only brought it out for his showers, during this time of the month. It had worked a lot better than anything else to drag out the flayed tissue from inside him, to clean himself out.</p><p>He doesn’t have that now. But he'd used his fingers before and he can again, even if the thought of having <em>anything</em> inside him makes him want to curl into a ball and die.</p><p>He’s never been able to do that, though, so he grits his teeth and tries not to think about what’s happening.</p><p>Sammy realizes sometime towards the end of his shower that he never told Ben he was trans. He doesn’t know. Or. He <em>didn’t</em> know, because he sure as hell can put these puzzle pieces together. Big, fat, <em>bleeding</em> pieces, painting a picture so obvious even the most oblivious person could figure it out.</p><p>Sammy presses his hands flat against the shower walls and ducks under the stray, trying to keep his breathing steady. It doesn’t work. His chest heaves and his throat burns, and he screws his eyes shut and pretends the water running down his face is just the shower spray.</p><p>(One more lie to make this hell bearable. He wonders when the weight of them all will finally crush him.)</p>
<hr/><p>Sammy steps out of the shower when the water runs cold, and is too drained to feel guilty. Ben will forgive him, won’t even think twice about it, and if he were more aware, that would only make him feel worse. Now, he's just numb.</p><p>He dries off mechanically, thoughts drifting and vague, and then he catches sight of the pile of cloth and plastic on the sink. His brain restarts with a sick lurch. Sammy thinks about wearing a pad, of the blood free to ooze out of him and soak into the gauze taped between his legs, pressed against his skin as it spreads, and feels nauseous. But like <em>fuck</em> if he’s going to put anything inside to catch the blood, so this is his only option.</p><p>(The only option short of impromptu surgery, but Sammy has never not been a coward. He thinks about all the pain he'll feel before it morphs into relief, and his skin crawls while his gut twists, and he can’t do it.)</p><p>When he was younger, before his HRT put an end to his period, he would begrudgingly unearth the few pairs of panties he owned to stick a pad to, and then hide it all under a pair of boxer briefs. It made him feel better, to have that all tucked away, bound in place by the extra fabric. Now, however, he's long since abandoned that technique, unnecessary, and doesn’t have anything besides boxers. Even if he <em>did</em>, all his stuff is in a locker in some other city, because he wasn't going to <em>need</em> any of it. Like he wasn’t going to need his hormones.</p><p>Sammy sits on the toilet again, hair dripping on the towel draped over his shoulders, and closes his eyes. He takes a moment to breathe, deep breaths in and out, trying to remember the rhythm and number counts to stave off panic attacks. He can’t remember them, but the deep breaths seem to help, and it’s not long before he can open his eyes and look at the pile Ben left without wanting to throw up.</p><p>Sammy kind of wishes Ben had grabbed proper clothes for him too, but Sammy has very specific plans for his outfit today and over the course of this hell, and Ben wouldn’t have gotten the right stuff. It doesn't really matter. His room’s just across the hall.</p><p>He’s stalling. Sammy takes another deep breath and grabs the pile.</p>
<hr/><p>It’s a harrowing three step journey back to his room, and Sammy darts across the hall with quick, light steps, not looking away from his door as he goes. He doesn’t check if he’s in Ben’s line of sight, to see if his friend sees him. He doesn’t want anyone to see him right now. If he doesn’t look, no one’s there. It’s a childish philosophy, but it carries him to his destination with minimal anxiety, and he takes whatever crutch he can find.</p><p>Sammy riffles through his clothes to find something he can tolerate wearing today and spots his packer out of the corner of his eye. It’s still where he left it last night, hidden well enough from anyone who doesn't know where he hides it, and he doesn’t think Ben saw it earlier. (But god, what if he did? What would he think of that? What does he think about all of this, this secret that Sammy never deigned to tell him in all their years of friendship?)</p><p>Sammy sees it and feels sick. He can’t wear it. Not now. Not with… <em>this</em> happening. He can’t stomach the thought of having it anywhere near that bleeding wound, the possibility that it might get contaminated by his body’s betrayal.</p><p>No. He can’t do that, even if the thought of leaving it behind makes him feel naked and vulnerable.</p><p>He shuts his eyes and breathes. Shakes his arms out to settle the static crawling under his skin. Scrapes his nails against his fingertips to get rid of the itch of lingering sweat.</p><p>Then he pushes his dysphoria as far away as he can and gets dressed.</p>
<hr/><p>Sammy wanders out of his room in his softest pajamas, towel still wrapped around his shoulders because he doesn’t have the arm strength to dry his hair right now. He keeps his eyes on the floor until he reaches the couch, then curls up in the corner, drawing his legs up to his chest. He wraps his arms around them and rests his chin on his knees. Keeps his thigh pressed tightly together, as if he can hold everything in, as if he can hold himself together when it feels like he’s about to fly apart at the seams.</p><p>“Here,” Ben says quietly. He taps the handle of a mug against Sammy’s hand and he pulls himself out of his ball to grab it. Steam warms his face and he takes in a big whiff of some sort of herbal tea. He takes a sip and lets it coat his throat. It’s syrupy on his tongue and he swallows a few times but it doesn’t lessen much.</p><p>“Thanks,” he says, because he knows Ben’s trying to help. He sets the mug down on the end table and curls up again.</p><p>Ben fidgets in the armchair, the closest seat that isn’t the couch, because he wants to be near, to help out, but knows Sammy well enough to recognise his need for space. But it’s Ben so he never goes far and Sammy doesn’t honestly mind. Even now. Maybe especially now, because he doesn’t know what he'd do to himself if Ben wasn’t here watching. Fall back on old habits, probably. His arms itch at the thought.</p><p>Ben only lasts another few seconds of silence. He’s not one for quiet. “Emily usually drinks that stuff. She taught me how to make it last time she was here. I know it’s not the same, you’ve probably got your own remedies and stuff and the flavor’s a bit, <em>ehh</em>, but I thought it’d help.”</p><p>Sammy hums a bit, but doesn’t really respond. He doesn’t remember if he had any specific methods he used, back when he regularly went through this. All he knows is that he tried to ignore it all until it went away. He never tracked his cycle. And he always managed to surprise himself with it, and stain whatever he was wearing at the start of it. It’d never been this bad before, though. That just makes this worse.</p><p>Ben keeps talking. He rambles about home remedies, different solutions for pain and cramps and how he used to help his mom with this, sometimes, and Emily now, just the once so far, but it's nice to feel useful when she’s so upset, and Sammy can’t take any more of this.</p><p>“<em>Stop it</em>,” Sammy bursts, cutting Ben off. He curls up tighter, fingers clawing at his knees. He glares at the floor, can’t pull his gaze up to glare at Ben. “Stop—treating me like <em>her</em>. I’m not—I’m not a <em>girl</em>.”</p><p>“Sammy,” Ben says, voice low and quiet, hurt, by him and for him. Sammy squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m not. I’m not doing that, okay? I don’t think—I know you’re not a girl. I don’t think you are. I’m just trying to help.”</p><p>“Well you can stop,” Sammy bites out. His voice shakes. “Just—I've done this shit before, I can handle it, I don’t need you <em>babying</em> me the whole time.”</p><p>“I’m not—”</p><p>“I didn’t <em>want</em> any of this! I never—it wasn’t supposed to be like this, I wasn’t going to do this ever again, it was all supposed to <em>stop</em>. But I can’t even do that right, can I, can’t even manage to fix my own body, can even make a plan that <em>works</em>, let alone follow through—” </p><p>Sammy cuts himself off with a gasp, hands pressed against his eyes and clawing into his skin. He shudders, feels his body shake from adrenaline and panic and sheer concentrated <em>loathing</em>—and the ball of heat in the back of his throat bursts and he sobs. Once, the initial release, and then he’s heaving from it, tears coursing down his cheeks and over his hands and he can’t <em>breathe</em>—</p><p>The couch shifts beside him and his body slumps sideways, right into Ben’s arms. He holds Sammy tightly, hands rubbing his back and chin hooked over his head, murmuring vaguely panicked reassurances that Sammy can’t entirely comprehend. But the timbre of Ben’s voice is a comfort and he lets the words wash over him like a soothing tide, calming the chaos tangled up inside him. His tears slowly stutter to a stop and he’s left feeling worn out and empty, but held securely in the circle of his best friend’s arms.</p><p>Sammy wants to sleep for the rest of the week. He wants to sleep until all this has gone away, and he wants to forgot this ever happened. He wants to go back in time and prevent this, fix this before it was broken. He wants a lot of things he can’t have.</p><p>He can’t have much, it seems, but he'll gladly take this, this safe space he’s found where he can simply <em>be</em>. His problems aren’t gone, haven’t been solved, but they can wait. He can deal with it later.</p><p>And this time, he has Ben at his side to help him.</p>
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